Level 3 is where I had the most trouble, from what I remember… I was stuck on that level for over a month before I bust through that roadblock. At that point nothing at all was sticking, it was very frustrating. After that, relatively smooth sailing until now.
Oh god, I really hated levels around lvl 30. Nothing bad with them, in particular, I just sort of burned out by then and didn’t level up for a couple of months. Pain and death did live up to their name for me. But hell was actually much more enjoyable than I thought it will be.
I’ve hit a wall on 17 and really slowed down. Lots of similar kanji starting to blur together. I’m also having trouble with the more nebulous terms. So many words for happiness, feeling, wish, and desire. Plus I have the incoming burn wave hanging over my head.
Around level 7 or 8 I started getting stuck repeatedly on many of the kanji. Not because it was a particularly difficult set of characters, but because I was being inefficient in my efforts to learn the content. The dumb stories that WaniKani tells you for each item aren’t just there for the sake of it, they’re there because if you can create a pathway in your mind towards remembering something, it’s much easier to retrace that path to retrieve the information when you need it. Instead of doing that, I was attempting to just remember an arbitrary sound for each of the thirty characters presented and it did not work well.
Reality is hell. There are just so many leeches and items you forgot exist popping up and you feel worse and worse because you don’t get the percentages you used to get… and as a non-native english speaker it gets harder to grasp the kanji’s meanings when you’ve never even seen the english meaning before. I certainly never encountered “auspicious” in any english media before… hmm, definitely can’t remember.
The mid-20s that I’m still in right now have been the most difficult so far. I haven’t slowed down (I actually sped up, which is probably part of the problem) but I did have to install the Self-Study Quiz API to drill the leeches and missed answers into my head more.
Old things start popping up that look like new things, new things have rendaku that I’m not expecting, old things have rendaku that I forgot, and I’m seeing a lot words that I’ve never seen before whereas earlier levels seemed to be the more common words that you see or hear a lot in various media.
I wouldn’t worry too much about there being a specific level that’s going to be harder than others. From what I’ve seen, it’s almost completely unique to the individual and I’m sure it depends a lot on life circumstances too. Any level could be difficult if your life outside WaniKani gets busy.
I have been on level 9 for 53 days, mainly due to taking a 5 month break/burn out. I’m starting to progress now that I have most of the leeches taken care of. My wkstats graph looks like a heart rate monitor though, so its been difficult to figure out how to manage until recently. Having a slower pace helps for me now. But, in my defense, I do have a learning disability and that is a good thing and a bad thing in my opinion. I have learned to be persistent and pay attention to detail. Even though I get stuff mixed up easily at first lol.
I am a baby so I don’t know yet… But I make sure to really sit down and take my time. If I find myself repeatedly forgetting things I have just learnt, I refuse to take new lessons until I become more confident in my readings/meanings. I don’t want to just push through for the sake of pushing through. I probably sit on levels for a lot longer than most people for this reason.